


save a snake ride a stripper(cup)

by tysonrunningfox



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: F/M, eret is the fairy godmother of stripping, every day is a gift, hiccup is a stripper, i haven't looked at this in years but i'm moving it over, strippercup au, the world is an adventure
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-08 20:57:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 18,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17988401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tysonrunningfox/pseuds/tysonrunningfox
Summary: When the job at McDonalds doesn't work out, Hiccup has to make rent somehow.





	1. Chapter 1

“Fresh meat,” Drago barks through the back stage door, shoving a scrawny guy through, wide eyed and generally alarmed as he twitches away from the big man behind him, rubbing his elbow and looking at Eret like a deer in the headlights.  

“Still twitching.” Eret snickers under his breath, pulling his shirt over his head and taking the bottle of baby oil from the rickety metal shelf and pouring some into his hand.  

“He’s going on tonight,” Drago sneers, “Sven…disappeared.”  The always ominous disappearance.  That same alibi that Eret can’t believe he ever fell for.  His hand lingers over the scar on his chest, slathering oil across the now white mark and he sets his chin.  

“You want me to show him the ropes.”  

“Half an hour,” Drago slams the door and leaves the backstage dressing room in awkward silence.

“The other guys aren’t coming in until later.  I’m early for a double shift, do you have a costume?”  Eret wonders if the guy—kid really, can’t be a day over twenty—even hears him, the way he’s staring around the room with wide green eyes.  Sparkling emerald eyes that the ladies are going to love.  It’s almost annoying, that this kid comes in with a devastating weapon, something that turns a forty dollar lapdance into sixty, while Eret has to spend hours at the gym to achieve the same effect.  

“Costume?”  

“Have you ever stripped before?”  Eret stops with the oil, wiping his hands on a rag and crossing his arms.  

“No.”  The guy rubs his hand through his hair.  “Dad kicked me out, the old job at McDonalds cliché didn’t work out and well…daddy issues have carried me this far.”  

Eret snorts, “so what? You googled male strip clubs?”  

“Pretty much, my ex-girlfriend made me watch Magic Mike and it looked so easy but now?”  He shrugs, “Now there’s…a linebacker ready for the rotisserie in front of me and I’m really wishing I hadn’t signed anything,” he waves an oddly twitchy hand at Eret’s torso and laughs, a breathless, bitter laugh.

“Hey, it’s a Tuesday night,” Eret takes pity on the kid even though he shouldn’t, even though he should see competition, his tips going into some green eyed young thing’s g-string.  “It’s not going to be busy, you can test out the waters.”  

“I take it there’s no way out of that contract,” the guy fumbles with the hem of his shirt for a moment.

“Not unless you have about five grand lying around.”  Eret shakes his head, “I’m Eret.  Don’t cross Drago,” he holds out his oily hand and shakes the guy’s, gesturing to the scar on his chest.  

“Right,” his pale face blanches a shade paler, and it’s just not fair the luck this guy is going to have with the rich, tipsy cougars.  “I’m Hiccup.”

“You’re going with Hiccup?” Eret steps out of his jeans and boxers, nonplussed when  _Hiccup_  wheezes and looks away.  “Because your stage name can be anything you want.  I’m Eret, Son of Eret.  Renowned dragon fighter,” he points to the fur shawl in his locker.  

“So I could go out there and call myself…I don’t know, Vlad the Impaler?”  The kid gives a shy thrust of his hips and Eret laughs.   Hiccup stares at the other man’s groin a moment too long before busying himself with the knob of a locker he obviously doesn’t have the combination for.  

“First tip, get used to naked men,” Eret pours another handful of baby oil into his palm, rubbing it on his legs and ass, “second, first thing tomorrow, use tonight’s tips to go get a full body wax.  It’s not worth scrubbing glitter out of body hair, not to mention that it makes everything you have look…bigger,” he does a demonstrative pec dance and Hiccup laughs, a high pitched, unsteady laugh.  

“What are you?  The fairy godfather of stripping?”  

“Third tip,” Eret grabs the sparky blue thong from his locker, pulling it on and getting situated. “Don’t stuff.  You’ll be tempted, because everything looks smaller under the bright lights, but that sock will fall out.  And you will be the worst kind of famous.  We all remember Cod Piece John.”  

“I feel like I should be taking notes.”  

“The first show is always the hardest,” Eret tosses the bottle of baby oil to the kid, shaking his head when he drops it on the floor.  “I’ll go on first and get them going, then it should be easy enough. There’s a spare box of costumes in the corner locker—don’t worry, we all wash them when we have to borrow.”  

He steps into the fur short shorts in his locker, double checking the snaps along the side seams.

“And you’re saying everyone isn’t going to notice my lack of all…that?”  

Eret looks over to see Hiccup shirtless and drowning in an oversized police vest.  He’s not bad looking really, the kind of Skinny that Sven was, and Eret can see why Drago scooped him up so quickly.  

“See if there are some chaps in there, they’d probably fit you better.  Tight.  Tight means tips,” he snaps the waistband of his shorts against his waist, smoothing the oil over his abs one last time.  

Hiccup holds a black thong out in front of him, stretching it with nervous fingers.  “I guess I’m about to learn Victoria’s Secret.”  

“Good, you’ve still got a sense of humor,” Eret pulls on his shawl, picking up his prop spear and twirling it in his hand.  “You might just make it.” 


	2. Chapter 2

“When you said ‘work thing’ I was not thinking of  _this_ ,” Ruffnut adjusts the dollar store veil on her head, wicked grin so wide her face could split right open.  Drago’s Den flickers in bright fluorescent lights ahead of them and Astrid crosses her arms, feeling dangerously out of place in the seedy parking lot. 

 “The chain ends here, I need to get inside and—”

“And you can’t convincingly shove dollars down a man’s thong.”  Ruffnut counts the wad of ones that Astrid handed her in the car, “I’ve got your back.”  

“Alright.”  Astrid tucks her bangs behind her ear and pulls out her ID, showing it to the bouncer, a first dose of well calculated eye candy in a tight black tee-shirt.  Ruffnut flirts with the guy, grabbing at his arm and playing the crazy bride to be all too well before Astrid drags her inside, skimming around the room.  

“Me likey,” Ruffnut trots ahead of her almost immediately, fumbling money out of her pocket and reaching towards the man on stage, tall and built, rippling muscles framed by a fur cape.  “I love your job.  I love your job so much.”  She shoves her way to the stage, dragging Astrid into the throng of drunk women with her. She glances at the man, unclipping his fur cape and grinding it on it between his legs, shiny and smooth all over like a ken doll on steroids.  

Ruffnut shouts in her general direction, “the things I would do to that guy.”  

“Go,” Astrid shoves her friend’s shoulder towards the stage.  “I’ll go get us some drinks.”  

She scans the room as she weaves her way through the crowd towards the bar, centering her focus on a nook in the East corner of the room, occupied by a large man on a red velvet couch. He’s sipping a glass of what looks like brandy and scanning the room like she is.  She leans against the bar, and the bartender comes over, blonde and bored and wearing the same tight black shirt as the bouncer.  “A vodka soda and a sprite.”  

“Just a sprite?”  The bartender frowns at her, “no extra sugar in that?”  

“Just a sprite,” she hands over a dollar extra and drums her hands on the counter.  “Designated Driver.”  

“How’d you draw the short stick?”  A voice from beside her catches her attention and she turns to see a guy about her age, sipping on a water bottle, like this is the gym, not a room full of gyrating men. He’s wearing a hoodie that’s way too big for him and his auburn hair is damp at the roots, like he did just come from the gym.  “The sober one at a strip club, that sounds like a little slice of hell.”  

“It’s my best friend’s bachelorette party,” Astrid delivers her cover story with what she hopes is a carefree smile.  The man on the velvet couch is staring their direction and she takes a deep drink of her sprite, like this conversation is uncomprehendingly interesting.  The guy on stage is down on his knees, thrusting his hips forward as Ruffnut slides ones deliberately down the front of his thong. “That’s her.”  

“Eret son of Eret, it’s a pretty brilliant stage name,” the guy gestures towards the stage, uncomfortably comfortable as the other man turns around and takes a dollar from Ruffnut’s hand with toned ass cheeks.  “Dragon trapper,” the guy takes another sip from his water bottle and laughs, “dragon is a euphemism.”  

“I got that.”  Astrid looks around again, spotting a thin trail of men among the crowd of women, all moving slowly towards a back door.  

“You don’t really seem that interested,” the guy slides his water bottle into the pocket of his hoodie, “the whole dragon trapping schtick not working for you?”  

“What are you doing here?” She snaps, because she’s distracted and he’s in her way.  

“Harassing everyone choosing sobriety,” he runs his hand back through his damp hair, attempting to smooth it down and mostly failing.  “I’m against anyone making responsible choices.”  

“Then go to an AA meeting,” she picks up both her drinks and looks for Ruffnut again, looks for the men and sees half as many.  

“Maybe after I get off work,” the guy smiles at her, unzips his hoodie to reveal a bare, skinny chest and chaps she somehow hadn’t noticed before.  He tosses his jacket over the bar and plants a cowboy hat on his head, tipping it towards her like she can’t see the sheriff badge star tacked onto his crotch.  “Little lady.”  

“And there’s a new sheriff in town,” the announcer blares as the guy jogs across the room, oblivious to his entirely bare ass as he vaults onto the stage, twirling a toy gun on his belt and blowing on it.  He points the gun at Astrid and rips off his chaps with his free hand, throwing them onto the stage behind him and gyrating along to the first downbeats of ‘Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy.’  

The crowd goes wild and it takes Astrid a second too long to look away, and when she does, the man from the couch is standing next to her, taller up close with long dreadlocks contrasting with his deep purple, flamboyant suit.  

“He was supposed to offer you a lapdance,” the man sets his empty glass on the counter and the bartender wordlessly fills it up from a gold embossed bottle that just looks expensive. “Did he?”

“I’m just here with a friend,” Astrid shrugs, taking a sip of her sprite and hoping it looks the same as the vodka soda in her other hand.  She realizes how out of place she must look, baffled by a stripper in a strip club, sober and scouting the room like she wants to escape.  She slurs her voice and stumbles a step sideways, exaggerating in a way that she hopes balances her behavior out.  “She’s getting married tomorrow.”  

“Bachelorette party discount then, fifty dollars for a five minute lapdance.”  The man laughs, and the sound is rusty, like it doesn’t happen much.  His thick Eastern accent carries through and she tries to place it.  Bulgarian?    

She hopes it’s Bulgarian. The club’s connections are Bulgarian, and if the drugs are coming from out of the country it makes sense that they haven’t shown up with any local suppliers.  

“For me or the bride?” the door behind the man’s shoulder opens and two guys slip inside, and she barely catches a glimpse of a bookshelf and what looks like false UV light.  The door slams shut and she can almost hear it over the crowd cheering as the sheriff on stage thrusts into his hat, auburn hair bouncing, sweatier than before.  His eyes meet hers and he grins, narrow chest rippling in a way that she shouldn’t notice.  

He’s a different sort of muscled, wiry and lean, with freckles layered under glimmering body oil as he bites his lip, like thrusting into the air feels good.  There’s something playful in his expression, like this is all a joke, like he’s expecting her to laugh and he won’t really mind.  He smacks his own ass and turns it towards the crowd, planting his hat back on his head.  

No one answers her question.

The man she was just talking to has disappeared too, leaving his velvet couch empty.  Astrid glares at Sheriff Naked on stage, because it’s obviously his fault she lost the only lead she had.  

She weaves back through the crowd to Ruffnut, reaching her just as Sheriff disappears, and shoving the vodka soda into her hand.  

“Come on, let’s get out of here.  I have to come back next week.  I messed up on recon.”  

“Just one more act,” Ruffnut pouts, draining her soda in a few gulps.  She’s flushed and sweating, her hand shiny with baby oil.  

“Aren’t you dehydrated enough from two?”  

“You’re no fun.”  She pouts.  “But I’m coming back with you next time.”  

“Whatever.  Yeah.”  

Sheriff appears from a door in the back, wearing sweatpants and nothing else and Astrid avoids eye contact, grabbing Ruffnut’s wrist and pulling her towards the door.  “Let’s just get out of here.”


	3. Chapter 3

“She’s back!”  Hiccup peeks through the curtain and grins at the blonde sitting down at the bar, sipping on another probably virgin drink. He looks back at Eret, who hasn’t quite managed to put his hangover behind him as he situates his thong on his hips.  “The sober chick from last week.”  

“Did she bring her friend?” Eret perks up slightly.  “That woman must have shoved fifty dollars down my pants.”  

“I don’t know,” Hiccup doesn’t bother looking around, his eyes fixed on the woman at the bar. She’s looking at her phone, almost bored, even as Ralph dances in half of a cop costume, ‘Fuck the Police’ playing at full blast.  Eret’s hand lands on Hiccup’s shoulder as he peeks out of the curtain as well.  

“She is here. Yes.  I’m getting the body glitter.”  

“Give me some of that,” Hiccup jogs after his friend.  “I’m giving Miss Sober a lapdance.”  

“I don’t think anyone sober is going to pay you for a lapdance,” Eret laughs, handing over the bottle of body glitter after dusting his own shoulders and thighs.  

“You don’t know the full extent of my charm.”  

“I think everyone knows the full extent of your charm after last week,” Eret laughs, knocking his fist gently against Hiccup’s arm.  

“Yes, it’s hilarious. The new guy’s cock fell out, you’re so original to keep joking about it.”  

“You’ve come a long way—”

“Yeah, pretty soon you’re going to have to stop with the sensei talk,” Hiccup grins, rubbing the body glitter across his chest as his smile dips to something sincere.  “Not that I’m not glad you were my sensei of stripping.”

“I like fairy godfather better,” Eret pulls his fur shawl around his shoulders and steps into his pirate boots.  “And I’m just saying, a week ago, it took you six shots before you’d even consider giving someone a lapdance.  You’ve really…come into your own.”  

“Is that a euphemism?” Hiccup laughs, “I don’t know.  I expected this to be…harder than it is.”  

“That’s definitely a euphemism.”  Eret stands and tosses Hiccup a Viking hat.  “I’ll let the DJ know you’re working the floor.  No point in getting all dressed up for that.”  

“A Viking hat?” Hiccup drops it onto his head even though it’s ridiculous and too big.  “Really? Isn’t that a little cliché?”  

“I thought you were going to go seduce Miss Sober,” Eret shakes his head and shoos Hiccup through the side door.  

“I just thought people came to strip clubs for originality,” Hiccup grins at his friend before leaving, doing his best to ignore the prickle of eyes on his bare torso as he merges into the crowd.  That’s the hardest thing to get used to, honestly, it’s not so bad on stage where the lights turn the crowd into a writhing mess of nothing distinctive, and then it’s like singing in the shower.  It’s funny, it’s hammy, it’s some stupid character he made up standing between him and the crowd.  It’s a shield.  

But when he leaves like this, oiled and glittery in comically short, shiny shorts and a stupid Viking hat, he can feel all of their eyes like daggers, digging into every inch of him—yes, that’s a euphemism too—and it’s all the guts he has to jut his shoulders back and push forward.  

He never could have done this in high school.  He never could have imagined this in his two unfinished years of college.  He was always skinny and unnoticed, a strange combination of baby fat, scrawniness, and wit that didn’t know when it shouldn’t bite that kept him lonely and arranging tanks in the back room of the local reptile shop.  

Miss Sober is still at the bar, sipping on what looks like another sprite and looking mildly disinterested as ‘Fuck the Police’ ends and Eret’s epic music starts.  Eret walks through the curtain like he owns the place, and it’s a stage presence Hiccup has alarmingly felt himself aspiring to in the last two weeks of madness that is contracted stripping.  Miss Sober’s eyes flick to the stage and hold for a moment before sliding back to her drink and up to meet Hiccup’s.  

She rolls her eyes.  

“That’s the weakest Viking costume I’ve ever seen.  They didn’t even wear horned helmets.”  

“You’re a freak,” he laughs, the smile coming more easily than it should when he’s this naked in a throng of this many people.  Maybe Eret was right.  Maybe he’s getting used to this.  He flexes what there is to flex and leans on the bar.  “All this and you notice the horned helmet.”  

“I noticed the rest of it the other night,” she takes a sip of her drink and if he’s not crazy, blushes slightly.  

“You did, huh?”  Maybe flexing worked better than he dreamed. “Well, I messed up the other night, I should have offered you a lapdance.”  

“Yeah, your boss came over and said as much.”  

Hiccup’s heart freezes in his throat, “he did?”  

“Apparently you were slacking off.”  

“Well you won’t find much slack now, milady.”  

She snorts, “what is that? A Viking term of endearment?”  But her cheeks are redder, her eyes flicking to his chest more frequently.  He grins.

“Come on, I’ll give you a discount.  Fifty bucks.”

She thinks on that for a moment, sipping from her glass.  She doesn’t look like the other women that come here, beyond her no nonsense expression there’s something in the way she holds herself, something reserved about her that make the clubbing clothes draped across her frame look like a costume.  He wants to see her let loose.  He wants to be the reason.  

And this job is eternally better than behaving at home, hiding everything he loves under the bed.

“If I get a lapdance from you, can I talk to you?”  

“What?”  He laughs, “Is that a kink or something?  Talking to mostly naked men in Viking hats?”  

“Could I talk to you for five minutes somewhere your boss wouldn’t hear?”  

“The mead room is ten bucks extra,” he points at the glowing gold curtain behind him.  “But well…if talking is your kink.”  

“Sixty bucks and I can talk to you for five minutes.  In private.”

“I’m starting to think that ‘talk’ is a euphemism.”  

“Not everything is a joke, you know.”  She reaches into her purse and produces three twenties, handing it to him and making sure their fingers don’t touch.  

“That’s hilarious,” he waves his hand at her, somehow flinching away from the normal hand hold at this step in the process.  He’s done this maybe a dozen times.  The first few with his eyes closed, hoping the drunk women beneath him wouldn’t notice. But it’s a show like the rest of it, an outward projection of everything he shouldn’t be, and once he found the humor in it, everything got easier.  He’s literally being paid for women to have his crotch in their face, and isn’t that some adolescent form of victory?  

He leads her into the mead room, golden lit and comparatively quiet, the heavy curtain drowning out some of Eret’s music.  There’s a more comfortable bar chair in the middle of the room and he gestures to it, grinning at her awkward expression when she sits.  “What?  Haven’t you ever done this before?”  

“How long have you been working here?”  She asks, perfectly composed but for the color in her cheeks, and he still wants to shake her.  More than ever, he wants to see her let go of that stalwart sobriety.  

He rests his hands on the chair above her shoulders and searches for the muted rhythm of the music outside of the room, twitching his hips towards her, thinking of anything but the absurdity of thrusting towards that impossibly beautiful face.  She doesn’t look like the woman who should be in a strip club.  She’s too pretty, too stern, too serious.  The kind of woman that can get any man naked for free.   “You don’t have to do that,” she shakes her head, staring at his chest and blinking like it’ll make him disappear.  

“Don’t worry baby, I know what I’m doing.”  He recites Eret’s favorite reassurance by rote, his grin suddenly feeling plastic on his face.  

“I really just want to talk to you.  You don’t have to…oh god,” she whispers the last part under her breath, closing her eyes, and he sees her lips form the words more than he hears them.  “You can sit down.”  

“Camera,” he nods towards the blinking lens in the corner.  “Don’t want to get fired.”  

“How long have you been working here?”  She asks again, an edge in her voice as she sits rigidly composed, her fingers digging into the skin around her knees.  

“Long enough.”  

“That’s not what I’m asking,” her voice is a little breathy and she maintains eye contact despite the way he arches and drags himself a few inches above her.  Don’t touch.  That’s the rule. Don’t touch unless they bring out the green and even then, barely touch.  

He wants to touch. God, when her cheeks flush pink and those blue eyes spring wide, he wants to touch more than he can comprehend, and for the first time, this job is truly  _hard_.  

“About 2 weeks.”  

“How did you find this position?”  She looks away from his eyes and bites her lip and he turns around, the Viking helmet clunking forward against his forehead when he juts his ass backwards, barely missing skimming her knees.  

“I asked for a job.  I thought waiter but Boss brought out the stripping contract and convinced me into signing it.”  

“How?”  She asks, and she’s smarter than she should be, her breath just barely evident against the glistening skin of his sharp hipbone when he turns back around and straddles her knees.  

“Convincingly.”  He hopes he still smells like rose oil when he gets himself obnoxiously close to her, hoping to distract her from her line of inquiry.  “Talking really is a thing for you, isn’t it?”  

“Have you ever seen any large amount of drugs in this establishment?”  

“What’s large?”  He cocks his head, pausing for a moment before bending down, just the tips of his hair tickling her scant cleavage.  

“Pounds.  Kilos.  Enough to be an operation.”  

“No.”  

She’s breathing hard and it’s killing him, the sweat springing along her brow as he barely touches her, so light it could be an accident, his fingers glancing across her knuckles.  He hasn’t heard the music in a minute, he has no idea what he’s doing.  He’s sure that the body glitter is fairy dust and the only reason she’s not laughing at him yet.  He’s just wiggling at this point, wondering if he’d just have better luck sitting down next to her and talking, because she seems to like that more than she likes his body.  

And god, she’s looking at his body.  Really looking.  Analyzing, and damn, the light in here must be flattering as hell because she’s anything but laughing.  

“Is there any part of the building to which you don’t have access?”  

“Your grammar is so proper, milady.”  He grins, “you should learn to let loose.”  

“How much of this is scripted?”  She smirks, and it’s the first thing she’s said that doesn’t sound scripted.  

“I could ask you the same thing.”  

“Come on, there’s no one room they won’t let you go into?  No door you haven’t seen behind?”  She glances at his crotch in a slow blinking way that sends strange, hot arousal furling into his chest and he turns away, grinding his ass back at her.

He trips on nothing when his feet aren’t even moving, and it’s a third grade nightmare all over again when he falls back onto her lap, flinching when her shocked hands land against his sides.  

“Umm,” she lifts her hands from him, leaving stinging tingles in their place.  

“I should charge you extra.”

“I’ll take it out of my dry cleaning bill,” her voice is rigid, nervous, on edge in a way that makes him want to stay seated until she verbally notices that he’s naked and hairless and that he looks pretty damn decent.  “Are you wearing enough oil?”  

“Glistening makes me look buff,” he rubs the back of his head and stands up, because the illusion is shattered, the act is over and thank god it happened behind the mead room curtain instead of out where Eret could have made fun of him.  His shorts are too tight.  His hat is too big.  When he faces her, she’s flushed but serious, her red face carefully composed.  “The door to the left of the stage.  We’re not allowed back there.  There were some pretty serious threats against it, in fact.”

“Thank you for your time,” she stands with a polite smile, adjusting her shirt.  He can see the slightly darker outline of his ass-print on her skirt and he would ask her for an extra tip if he could think.  “I got what I needed.”  

“Why is that so ominous?” He laughs, taking off the helmet long enough to push his hair away from his face.  “You aren’t trying to rob the club or anything, right?”  

“I didn’t realize you were so invested.”  

“I’m not,” he shrugs. “But Drago is.  And things don’t go well for people that steal from him.” He doesn’t know why he brings it up, those parts of his contract he’s been trying not to think about for weeks. The parts he might as well have signed in blood.  

“I might be back,” she adjusts her shirt again, looking at him sincerely, her face brighter red as she pulls a business card out of her pocket.  

“Of course you will, milady.”  He puts on his best grin and she holds the card towards him.  

“Call me if you see anything.”  

The card is white, devoid of logo, her name ‘Astrid Hofferson’ printed in crisp Times New Roman above a phone number and generic e-mail address.  

He can’t wait to tell Eret about this one. 


	4. Chapter 4

Miss Sober, or  _Astrid_ , as Hiccup kept calling her with a dreamy, far off expression on his face, is back the next night in a brown wig that would probably fool anyone that hadn’t heard too much about her in the last 24 hours. Her friend isn’t with her and Eret frowns as he steps off stage after his set, out of breath with not quite enough cash down the front of his falsely ashy thong.  He pulls ones out by the handful, folding them and tucking them into the pocket of his Drago’s Fire Department vest.  The bartender hands him a bottle of water and he takes a sip, looking at  _Astrid_  out of the corner of his eye.  

She’s ignoring the man on stage, and he barely caught her glancing at him a couple of times.  It’s like she’s bored, and she’s not quite drunk enough to be bored, her spine too rigid for that glass to have anything but water in it.  She glances at the stage and frowns, pulling a small notebook out of her purse and scribbling a note at the top of a fresh page.  

He turns towards her, “There won’t be an exam, love.”  

“I’m just…making a note to ask Tarzan what he stuffs his underwear with.”  She looks at him like a deer in the headlights, pushing brown back from her forehead and revealing a few threads of wily blonde.  

“Cocaine, mostly.” Eret slides closer to her along the counter, close enough that the security cameras won’t pick up what he’s saying.  “DEA or sheriff’s office?”  

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she leans towards him, wide eyes darting both ways.  “I’m just here enjoying the scenery.  Art student,” she flips through the notebook to a page with a few sketches it looks like she traced from an internet search of Da Vinci.  “You should let me sketch you.  It can be my…grimy period.”  

She tries to flirt, tracing distinctively clinical fingers across his chest, but they still and linger at the white scar, smudged with dark makeup.  She wipes away the grease, showing the white scar, and her eyes light up. “You—”

“Like I said.  Tarzan stuffs with cocaine.  Some favor heroin.  But prescription painkillers,” he leans in closer, because this has to look like flirting, her hand curls against his chest and he can feel her coiling to shove him off.  Definitely not sheriff’s office, she’s better trained than that.  DEA or maybe even FBI.  Her breath evens against the side of his face and he knows this is a fight he doesn’t want to start.  “That’s where the real money is.”  

“Threatening me won’t get you anywhere.  Stand down.” She hisses in his ear, and he wonders if there’s a gun in her purse.  Probably.  He remembers the bite of a gunshot, the way that slug felt slicing through the outside of his thigh, like fire and ice, pain his mind couldn’t make sense of through the haze of chemicals in his blood.  

There’s not a day he wishes that Drago didn’t patch him up.  

“I know a cop when I see one, sweetheart.  I want to take Drago down.”  He looks over his shoulder, winks at the camera to cover the nervous flush of his cheeks, his sweating palms.  When he looks back at her she’s softer but still on guard, leaning almost imperceptibly towards him.  

“How do I know that I can trust you?”  Her voice is flirtatious, textbook flirtatious, and it seems like she should be batting Betty Boop eyelashes at him.  She knows about the cameras.  She reaches out and places her hand against his scar stretching the skin tight and frowning at the  _brand_.  She’s seen it before.  Her eyebrows furrow and she bats her eyelashes again, more of a twitch than a real attempt at flirting.  “That’s nice. Is it part of the costume?”  

“It’s all part of the costume.”  He looks at the camera again, at the man on stage, on his knees, his eyes glazed in that hyper, frenetic way.  

“Right now,” she tosses her brown hair and sits up straight, “I’m Heather and I’m practicing life drawing. I’m an Art Student.  I’m 23 and slutty.”  

“Repeat that to yourself a few times, love?”  Eret leans in, shaking his shoulders for a moment with the music, like he’s attempting to tempt her into shelling out.  “Loosen up.  You’re too obvious.”  

“I talked to a guy in here yesterday.  Skinny, clumsy,” her lips quirk into something different from distanced, hostile professionalism and Eret can’t help but smile himself.  “Viking hat.  Is he—”

“He’s in costume as well.” He smiles, “ _Astrid_.”  

“Don’t say that out loud.” She hisses, crossing her ankles and swinging them, like she might actually be a 23 year old art student distracted by the nearly naked man on stage.  

“He waved your business card in my face like a trophy.”  

“He’s…” she snorts. “He’s something.  You’re a real stripper, you know?”  Her voice drops and she sits up straight, puffing herself up. “All swagger and muscles and—he’s kind of a dork.  He has no rhythm at all but somehow it’s,” she smiles and takes a sip of her drink like she wishes it were stronger, “sort of—well, Drago is roping guys like that in, something is shifting—”

“Not here,” he shakes his head.  “And I tried with that boy’s rhythm, there’s just…Is there something like tone deafness that applies to musical rhythm?”  

She shrugs and looks at him strangely, those faux-flirtatious eyelashes making another appearance.  “Do you have a car?”  

“Shitty old Volvo.”  

“What color?” she pulls one of those business cards out of her notebook and flashes it so that the camera can’t see.  He almost asks her to wrap it in a five and put it where he wants it, but she might be able to help him.  He might finally have an ally in this years’ long battle.  A capable ally, someone who isn’t stuck in the same drugged pit he knows all too well.  

“Blue.”  

“Oh,” she smiles and stands up, taller than he’d expected somehow.  “I think I saw it on the way in.  Your drivers’ side front tire is flat.”  

She pokes his scar one last time, smudging makeup back across the skin and turning for the door.

He finishes the rest of his shift in sort of an excited blur, enthusiastic but vacant as he strives to make up the profit lost on Miss Sober/Astrid/Heather’s missing friend, and when Drago finally lets him go at four in the morning with a solemn nod, he races to his car, leaning down to check that ‘deflated’ front tire.  

There’s someone leaning against it, curled into a tiny, slightly misshapen ball and Eret springs back with a yelp.  He pictures Astrid beneath the hood, beaten and bloody, caught for her terrible flirting, for sticking out like a sore thumb.  For helping him.  A piece of trash blows across the parking lot and he flinches, half expecting a bullet out of nowhere, this time better aimed than his head.  

He can feel it in his memory, clearer than the whole night, than the last two, slow years combined. That rush of morphine in a cot in the back of the club, and suddenly the dingy walls don’t matter, it’s all about that rush, that calm blazing through his veins and erasing all of the wrong in the world.  

Hiccup peers out of the hoodie, yawning and nervous.  

“Whoa dude, did I scare you? I’m sorry, I just—”

“What the hell are you doing?”  Eret steps back to the car, nudging the half-full duffel bag with his toe. “Sleeping in the fucking parking lot? Do you know what kind of neighborhood this is?”  

“Thanks  _Mom_ ,” Hiccup stands and rolls his eyes, his hands cupped strangely over his stomach.  “I just—ooh, squirmy—I didn’t know where else to go.”  

“What happened?” Eret’s eyes flick to the strange bulge in Hiccup’s hoodie, flinching when it moves.  Coils.  “What the hell is that?”  

“Oh, sorry.  That’s just—come out here, buddy,” Hiccup unzips his jacket halfway and a snake head winds out momentarily before flinching against the cold and disappearing back into the cave.  “That’s Toothless.  He’s—I got evicted from my shitty apartment because his shitty tank broke and he was loose and the landlord came by and—I didn’t know where else to go.”  

Eret sighs, “Get in.” He fumbles his keys out of his pocket and unlocks the drivers’ door, smacking the interior just right to unlock the other three.  “My couch pulls out.”  

“Thank you,” Hiccup sighs, “thank you, thank you.  You’re more than my fairy godfather of stripping, you’re just like—”

“You can suck up in the morning, I didn’t get a parking lot nap.  Let’s get going.”  Eret glances again at the churning mass in the front of Hiccup’s hoodie.  “That snake isn’t going to strangle me, is it?”  

“Nah.  He only likes pretty girls and evil, evil yorkies. You’ll be fine.”  

“Get in,” Eret watches as Hiccup loads his duffel bag into the backseat and walks around to the passenger side before remembering why he was so excited in the first place.  He leans down next to the tire and finds a white card tucked into the rusty hubcap, Astrid Hofferson printed on it in crisp lettering.  He tucks it into his pocket and climbs in, shutting the rickety door behind him.  

“What’s that?”  Hiccup asks, holding the snake like a lifeline, kissing its scaly head as it peeks out again, its chin resting on his chest.  

“What’s what?”  Eret wrinkles his nose.  

“You just put something in your pocket.”  

Eret thinks about just telling him.  That  _Astrid_  is a cop who’s onto Drago and that he’s going to bring the entire operation down.  But that requires telling him about the operation, the drugs, those hazy years spent as a sleepless henchman, as a tool, as practically a commodity, sleeping on the cot in back, beholden to the drugs.  It requires telling him about three years ago, getting clean and telling Drago, like he expected pride or a pat on the back and getting branded instead. Given a new prescription and dragged back under like a wayward puppy wandering outside of the dogfighting fence.

“Dollar lying in the parking lot.”  

“Ooh, Washington side up? Because then it’s a lucky dollar.”

“Yeah, I—it must be my lucky dollar.”  He starts the car and pulls out of the vacant parking lot.  


	5. Chapter 5

“Senator Haddock is running for reelection,” Astrid’s boss paces behind his desk while she sits small and exhausted in one of the visitor chairs.  “His opponent wants to defund your department completely.  We need a breakthrough in this case, Officer Hofferson.”

“I know, chief.  I know and I have one.”  She nods, swallowing back a yawn, because as much coffee as she’s pumping into her veins, the eight to five followed by six hours staking out Drago’s Den is exhausting.  Her head itches from the wig she wore the night before and she pats her pocket, hoping for her phone to buzz and for it to be the helpful fireman stripper, and that she can get his name so that she can stop calling him the helpful fireman stripper.  His brand—and god, that’s absolutely barbaric—was the closest thing to a solid connection she’s had since she saw that stamp on the signature line of those falsified exotic animal import documents.  

“A door isn’t a lead, Hofferson.  We need a witness, we need a sample.”  Her boss gives her a sympathetic look, sighing and leaning on his desk.  “Drago Bludvist is a tough nut to crack, we’ve had him in custody half a dozen times and nothing has ever stuck.  We need evidence of how he operates, and I know you can get it.”  

“I can.”  Astrid nods, standing up and collecting her folder of research into her hands.  “I’ll go back tonight, I have a witness and I’m waiting for him to contact me, but I also have a lead on location.  When can I request backup?”  

Her boss blanches, scratching the back of his head.  “You know I can’t allocate departmental resources to this, Astrid.  You know that this case is a…favor.  Senator Haddock is counting on this to be quiet.”  

Astrid thinks of the first half of the bonus sitting pretty in her bank account, the fact that playing straight her whole life somehow roped her into being crooked.  “I’ll go back tonight.”  

Her boss dismisses her with a wave of his hand, the bones and tendons standing out in stark relief against the hand she shook at her interview straight out of college, the hand that was once strong.  Unmistakably hardy.  She tucks her hair behind her ear and sighs, heading towards the break room for her sixth cup of coffee today before heading back to her office.  

Her phone rings and she fumbles it out of her pocket with exhaustion clumsy fingers, glancing at the unknown phone number before pressing it to her ear.  “Hello?”  

“Hey Astrid, is this Astrid? I guess it could be like, an assistant or something but—now I’m embarrassed, please tell me that this  _isn’t_ Astrid.”  

“It’s Astrid,” she recognizes the voice, associating it immediately with chaps and Viking hats, and as much as she wants to, she can’t pawn it off immediately on being very good at her job.  “Who is this?”  

“Good to know how memorable I am,” he laughs, and a door shuts on his end of the phone, the dull roar of traffic replacing ambient quiet.  “You paid to talk to me the other night, I’m shocked you don’t remember the sound of my voice.”  

“I never got your name.”

“Hiccup,” he laughs. “You can call me Hiccup.”  

“You know, that’s not going to look very good on official documentation.  I sort of need a last name, an address.  A social security number.”  

“Good thing I’m not calling as a witness, because it sounds like you steal their identities.”  He laughs, a boyish sound that fits him all too well.  

“What do you mean you’re not calling as a witness?”  Her stomach squirms strangely, a larger, more menacing butterfly in her gut, and she wonders if the helpful fireman stripper lied to her.  If  _Hiccup_  is working for Drago and this is all a trap.  

“You gave me your number, what did you expect to happen?”  He laughs again, his breath rasping against the speaker.  

“I expected you to call me if you had information about illegal activities in the club.”  

“Maybe I do, maybe I don’t.” He’s smiling, she can hear it in his voice, picture it, lopsided and endearingly goofy on his face.  She’s never been great with faces, they’ve always sort of escaped her and she’s resorted to recognizing new acquaintances by their hair or the way that they hold themselves.  But his face is burned into her mind in a half dozen different expressions, ranging from hollowly cocky to genuinely nervous.  He stuck like people usually don’t and like potential witnesses never should.  “Maybe I’d tell you if you got some coffee with me.”  

“And why would I do that?” She sets her mug back in the cupboard, ignoring the tepid coffee on the breakroom counter and wandering back towards her office.  She’s the youngest agent in her department with an office, maybe even the youngest agent in this whole city.  It’s not much, just a desk and a filing cabinet and a window overlooking the lake across the street, but it’s hers and the door shuts and locks away the cubicle gossip.  

“Because I know a diner with great coffee.  And because I may or may not have information invaluable to your case.”  

“How do you know I’m building a case?”  She stares at the plaque hanging above her desk, gold foil decorated, dated three months ago.   _Honorable Comportment_.  She got that after the Dragon’s Nest Fiasco, when their own were caught dealing and they had to reform from within.  

Now what is she?  

An agent for hire, like a legal mercenary, a living oxy-moron spending the fruits of her years at the police academy in a stupid strip club.  

“Bog’s Diner.  It’s a few blocks away from the club, the seediest place you’ve ever seen, but the coffee and French toast are top notch.”  

She sighs and pushes her bangs away from her forehead.  They’re frizzy, she didn’t take the time to dry her hair after her half-asleep shower that morning.  She probably looks like shit and she can’t fathom why she cares.  

“Half an hour,” she grabs her jacket off of the back of her chair, slinging it over her shoulders and hanging up before he can say anything else.  Even if she’s alone, French toast and coffee sounds better than sitting here like a prop.  

She pulls into the parking lot twenty eight minutes after hanging up and steels herself for a moment before weaving through the gaggle of Harleys out front and pushing through the front door.  A sign with slide out letters says ‘Seet Yurself’ and she looks around for a moment before seeing Hiccup’s impossibly distinctive hand waving at her from a corner booth.  

He’s already sipping on a cup of black coffee, his black hoodie—the same hoodie that he nearly fooled her with the first time they met, no doubt—is sitting beside him and his long sleeves are pushed up to his elbows as he spins his mug with absent minded fingers.

“I didn’t think you’d actually show up.”  

“I could use some coffee.” She slides into the booth across from him and it’s so painfully normal when her knees bump against his as she gets comfortable.  The whole diner smells like Marlboro reds and coffee and it reminds her of her uncle, of early mornings fishing out on the lake.  

“This place has the best coffee.  Seriously, here just try it,” he shoves his mug towards her, pointing at it and waving to an older, exhausted waitress on the other side of the room.  Astrid gingerly picks up the cup and takes a sip, closing her eyes and yawning.  “It’s supposed to wake you up.”  

“It just reminded me that I need waking up.”  

“Late night?”  

“And an early morning.” She pulls the menu towards her, greasy laminated paper straight out of 1970.  “So the French toast, huh?”  

“It’s amazing.  I don’t know what they do to it, but it’s great.”

He’s so enthusiastic, younger and brighter than the guy in the club wearing next to nothing and Astrid sets the menu down on the table, cocking her head like he’ll make more sense at five degrees.  She bites her lip and sighs, because this is more than she should ask a witness and maybe he’s not the witness she wants him to be.  

“How old are you?”  

“Old enough.”  He takes a sip of his coffee, narrowing his eyes at her.  The waitress sets a cup of coffee in front of her, ignoring the way it splashes onto the tabletop.  

“What can I get you two?”

“The regular for me,” Hiccup slides his menu into the holder behind the rack of half-filled hot sauce bottles.  

Astrid shrugs, “I’ll take his regular too.”  

The waitress slumps back towards the kitchen and Astrid puts her menu away with Hiccup’s, taking a sip of her coffee.  

“Best coffee in the world, right?”  

“It’s alright.”  She drums her fingers on the side of the mug, “So why did you ask me to meet you here?”  

“Ouch,” he laughs, running his hand back through his hair.  It’s fluffy and reddish brown and she can’t help but remember it tickling across her skin.  “I thought I was pretty obviously asking you on a date.”  

“Nice place,” she looks around the diner and her lip twitches into half a smile.  

“I’m a stripper, a  _male_  stripper, a skinny male stripper,” he laughs. “I’m not exactly rolling in it.”  

“Do you ask all the women you meet at the club on dates?”  

“Only the ones that leave me their number.”  He laughs, “so you.  Only you.”

Astrid takes a long sip of her coffee.  “It’s better than alright.  Pretty spectacular, honestly.”  

“I told you.  Just wait for the rest of it.  There’s magic in that kitchen.” 


	6. Chapter 6

She’s laughing. Honestly laughing. A pink-cheeked, half-stifled sort of laugh that’s reaching for professionalism she left at the first sip of magic, enchanting coffee. 

“So is the DEA all interrogating strippers? Was I your third target this week?” He asks, leaning towards her conspiratorially. She sits up straight, dragging her fork through the left over syrup on her plate. She ate French toast like it was trying to get away, the sugar ushering color back into her pale cheeks. She’s tired, and when he thinks of her as one of those adult humans with a normal sleep schedule and a day job it makes him feel like an anthropologist, researching some tribe he’s not sure he wants to spend any time living with. 

“This is my interrogation Mr…” she frowns, “I still can’t put Hiccup on forms, you know.” 

“I’m untrackable, all my dreams have come true,” he throws his arms wide, like he’s holding some massive platoon of accomplished dreams and everything he’ll never do teases his good mood, a tether to his empty pocket and nude future in front of a bunch of women (and a few men) who aren’t Astrid. Not that he’s discontent with his job, it’s better and more lucrative than anything he could have expected to stumble into with his snake stashed in the back of his cousin’s borrowed car at midnight on the bad side of town, it’s just…maybe his anthropologist side wants to experience the adult mating ritual with two-sided nudity and a beautiful woman, one on one. 

“I get the feeling you don’t know anything,” she shrugs, pushing her empty plate towards the edge of the table and fiddling with a sugar packet, her lower lip plump and pink next to white teeth digging into it. “Which means that this isn’t a conflict of interest, but it is a waste of time.” 

“Ouch,” he claps his hand over his heart. She doesn’t sound mean, she doesn’t look mean and it’s easy to guess how she could, how her face could set into something fierce and solid. She’s confused, cocking her head at him slightly and fixing a startlingly clear gaze on him. 

“If this is a date, you’re paying, right?” 

“Right, because I’m the guy.” He grins, his heart beating far too fast in his chest. 

She shakes her head, “because you chose the restaurant. The chooser has to pay. Haven’t you dated this decade?” She reaches across the table and knocks her fist against his arm. 

“Not much,” he pulls his disconcertingly bulging wallet out of his pocket and starts counting that all too conspicuous stack of ones. The woman at the table across from them snickers and he pauses to wipe baby oil from one of the slightly glittery dollars on his old, worn out jeans. A five crops up in the stack and he laughs, false and high-pitched, running his hand through his hair, “I wonder what I did to earn that.” 

“Right,” she’s suddenly rigid, sighing, chewing on that plump lower lip. 

“What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing,” she shrugs. “I just…I forgot, for a second.” 

“Oh,” he blinks, looking down at his lap, the glittering smear of oil across his leg. 

“Not that—” She shakes her head, rummaging briefly through her purse and smearing chapstick across her lips. “I have to come by the club tonight. Will you be there?” 

“Are you hoping for a freebie?” His mouth forms the words without his express consent and he wonders if Eret would be proud or roll his eyes. 

Half a smile slips through her serious veneer and she shrugs, “That’s bad business practice.” 

“She’s coming again tonight,” Hiccup jumps a couple of times as he pulls up the leather underwear, wincing as they tug on the hair he insisted on keeping. Adamantly. He’ll strip and flirt and dance, but he will not revert to the hairless balls he had when he was 11. That’s just going too far. 

“Really?” Eret cocks his head and slides into his fur vest, “how do you know?” 

“Because earlier, we went on a date-type-outing to the diner,” Hiccup grins and fastens his cape around his neck, reaching for the fake teeth in the top of his locker. No one else is pulling off the wiry, undead, sex-symbol thing, and the teeth were three dollars. He might as well try. “And she told me she’d by by. So, you know, I asked her if she was looking for a freebie—”

Eret cuts him off mid-hip-shake, “Did she say why she was coming?” 

“You can’t even take a minute to celebrate my date?” 

“It’s not as surprising as you make it out to be,” Eret shrugs, a smile flashing across his face as he knocks his fist against Hiccup’s bare, oily side, peeking through the curtains. “Invite her over tonight.” 

“To your couch?” Hiccup laughs, now nervous, checking the mirror twelve times and flexing what just doesn’t seem to be there. “If this is some elaborate prank, give up now. I’m not that stupid.” 

“Invite her over for a drink, or something. Tell the truth, just say you’re crashing for a while because your parents are being a pain.”

“But I actually like her.” Hiccup snorts. 

“Everyone fights with their parents.” Eret turns back to him and there’s something desperate in his face, something explicitly uncool.

“What’s up, man?” 

“Nothing.” 

Hiccup narrows his eyes, “you’re all twitchy.” 

“New workout,” Eret flexes. “Constant twitching, obscene definition.” The first organ note of Hiccup’s music rings through the backstage, “sounds like you’re on.”

“You’re not telling me something.” 

“Yeah, about all of the rent you’re not paying.” Eret claps his hand on Hiccup’s ass like a football coach, pointing towards the curtain. “Go get ‘em, Vlad.” 

“It’s funny, you can’t say it’s not funny,” Hiccup calls over his shoulder as he half runs towards the stage and slips through, taking a moment to acclimate to the bright light blinding him. Astrid is at the bar, sipping on a Sprite, and she looks at him and smiles, her hair glossy and tucked halfway behind one ear. He flushes in spite of himself, in spite of this feeling like old hat. 

It’s not Vlad the Impaler’s first rodeo, though, he’s been playing succubus to all of the blood having ladies for the last few centuries. He bares his fangs, playing Nosferatu, and the crowd goes wild, cheering and surging towards him. This is when it’s dreamlike, when all of these woman are screaming and waving dollars in his direction. Better than the college football scouts that he never drew to him. 

Astrid smiles and stirs her drink with her straw, and something about the lights and the sound, the organ music blasting in his ears as the short, silky cape tickles his waist, and he snaps. When his hips start to move, vaguely in tune with the beat that doesn’t really exist, he’s looking at her. Not at the dollars that find his way into his costume bottoms when he kneels on the stage and shakes his ass in a way that should be a joke, that is and isn’t a joke all at the same time. 

Schrodinger’s comedy. He’s both being funny and being deadly serious. There’s no real line, every motion is both laughable and hot with her eyes boring into him. He can feel her watching when he turns around and hisses, Nosferatu if he had a tail for someone to step on, and his chest flushes below the thin glaze of sweat. 

Astrid rolls her eyes and tucks her hair behind her ear, missing eye contact by a micron.


	7. Chapter 7

Eret knows he should just call Astrid.  She’s DEA, exactly who he should talk to.  She’s professional, from all that he’s seen.  It would be too easy to call her, take a bus to her office—her heated, professional, official office—and tell her everything he’s seen, everything he’s done, everything that’s happened.  

He knows he’d get a deal. Be a witness, get protection.  He’s seen other guys try and even succeed in other circles.  He’s seen it go badly with Drago so many times.  

“You’re quiet,” Hiccup scratches his head, stretched out on the couch with that snake curled on his stomach.  He strokes its scales mindlessly, groggy eyed with a smear of baby oil gelling his hair straight back from his forehead.  “No nagging me to get up and do pushups with you?”

“I’m just tired.” Eret turns on the TV and flicks through three channels of static before landing on a commercial, Senator Haddock grinning like everyone’s surrogate father from a campaign commercial.  

“Turn that guy off,” Hiccup gripes, hugging his snake and shifting like he suddenly realized that Eret’s shitty, goodwill couch is uncomfortable.  

“Worried he’s going to start nagging you to work out too?”  

“You have no idea.” Hiccup sits up, yawning and stretching his arms over his head, mumbling something sarcastic under his breath when the snake squirms and winds partially around his wrist.  “But stop changing to subject to Senator McMuscles.  What’s up, dude?”  

“I just…I’m so deeply disappointed that you didn’t invite Astrid over last night,” Eret shakes his head, feigning remorse because it’s easier than smiling.  “I take all this time teaching you the way of the stud and you don’t make any sort of move.”  

“I made a move.  I made all the moves,” Hiccup wiggles, “all of them.  You were probably blinded by it.  That’s why you didn’t notice.”  

“Was she blinded by it too?” Eret stands and walks towards his kitchen, flicking Hiccup on the shoulder.  “I think you’re confusing your moves and your tan.”  

“Oh, the sweet, sweet smell of macho training in the morning,” Hiccup flops flat and hugs that snake like a puppy.  “How I didn’t miss it.”  

“Shouldn’t you buy that thing a cage or something?”  Eret flicks his eyes towards Toothless, who still makes him nervous.  

“He has a tank.” Hiccup shrugs towards the heat lamp in the corner of the room, lit and carefully laid out.  “I just wanted some morning love from my main man,” Hiccup kisses the snake’s head and Eret laughs, the first genuine laugh since he first sat with his phone and realized that he couldn’t call Astrid’s phone number, he couldn’t take that plunge.  He couldn’t end up like those other guys, drugged up and left in alleyways, found in the morning by apathetic garbage men.  

“I thought I was your main man.”  

“Not my type,” Hiccup stands, hefting the snake around his shoulders like a scarf and following Eret to the kitchen.  

Eret pauses and looks at the other man for a moment, the snake curled around his neck, its tail wrapping around an arm and hinting at a bicep that’s normally nearly invisible.  And it’s better to think about being the Fairy Godfather of Stripping than it is to think about the drug storage under the stage, about the pills he flushes and says he takes, about the phone number he can’t call sitting in his sock drawer.  

“Will he just hang around your neck like that?”  

“No,  _Dad_ , he’s not going to strangle me.  I’m where the rats come from, he’s not stupid,” Hiccup reaches his hand into the box of cereal on the counter and crunches it, a spray of crumbs coating the snake’s head.  “Rats, not cereal.”  Hiccup holds his hand away from the snake, which flicks its tongue at his nose. “You’re still a carnivore, bud.”  

“I think we found your schtick,” Eret laughs.  “Maybe now you can start making enough to buy your own cereal.”  

00000

“This is ridiculous.” Hiccup laughs, batting Toothless’s head away as the snake sniffs the top of his leopard patterned…loincloth, before wrapping harmlessly around his torso.  Toothless glows, blue and green tones in his black scales as he collects coconut oil from Hiccup’s skin.  “I’ve done a lot of ridiculous things in the last few weeks, but this is the worst.”  

“It’s the best,” Eret crunches his hand in Hiccup’s gelled hair, a cultivated mess, flinching when Toothless bumps his head against Eret’s hand.  “I never bought you as a succubus, but a socially awkward Wildman—”

“Hey!”  Hiccup thumps one fist against his chest, “Tarzan get Jane.”

“See?  The socially awkward thing works if you were raised by snakes.”  Eret holds his laugh in for a minute before both he and Hiccup burst out in giggles, middle school boys who found a gay porn magazine.  

“By big, black snakes.”

“And it’s a perfect costume for you, because everyone will be looking at this snake,” Eret gestures to the boa, “and it makes the suggestion that the other snake is bigger and blacker.”

“Wouldn’t daddy be proud?” Hiccup snorts, some of those newbie, pre-show nerves flashing across his face.  “You’re on before me, aren’t you? You should get dressed.”  

“I’m working the floor tonight,” Eret shrugs.  “Someone has to remind everyone to cheer for you.”  He slides his pants down his legs and stuffs them in the bottom of Hiccup’s locker, rather than opening his own.  

“They don’t need reminding,” Hiccup’s smile is back and he repositions the snake around his shoulders, bouncing back and forth between bare feet, and for a moment, Eret is jealous. Because Hiccup still has all that new charm, that lankiness that makes him look graceful even when he’s not. He’s still young and untouched by this shitty place, the kind of naturally plucky that means he isn’t degraded by all of this, that keeps him making big black snake jokes after weeks of never making quite enough.  

“Cocky little shit,” Eret claps his hand on Hiccup’s back and finishes getting ready while Hiccup talks to the DJ, figuring out his order.  Drago thought the snake gag was brilliant, smiling at Eret in that deadly way, the way that looks like management and scans for a nonexistent glaze in Eret’s expression.  

The club is full, Friday night full, and he spots Astrid’s friend up by the stage, apathetic towards the fireman on stage.  Tarzan had his schtick stolen and ended up in Eret’s fireman hat, and Hiccup is really going to have to come through and get everyone riled.  The kid can do it though, the snake is just the right element of danger.  

Astrid is sitting at the bar, blonde today and wearing less than Eret has seen her wear, probably trying to cover up that business like modesty and ultimately failing.  She looks more likely to garrote him than to let anyone buy her a drink, and the stack of ones in her hand don’t look like they’re going anywhere.  She looks up at him and smirks, pushing her sprite out of her way and waving her phone at him.  

“Lose my number, big guy?”

“I…I heard you went to the diner with Hiccup.”  Eret leans against the bar beside her and she looks towards her friend.  “Please.  Invite her over here.  Big tipper.”

“I think she has plans to kidnap you.”  She waves towards the other woman and gestures to Eret, “Any secrets you want to divulge before she locks you in her basement?”  

“I’m…I’m working on it.” He nods, more to himself than to her. “There’s…I’m not the first one to talk, you know,” he leans close, because her friend is coming, smiling like a little girl at Christmas.  “And it didn’t work out so well for the others.”  

“I can protect you.”  

“I’m on the clock,” he grins, turning towards her friend and pasting his widest smile on his face as she grabs his arm.  He looks over his shoulder at Astrid.  “Stick around to see Hiccup, Tarzan isn’t stuffing anymore.”  


	8. Chapter 8

Ruffnut didn’t really believe Astrid when she came home from a date with the cowboy stripper.  He’s not Astrid’s usual type, not serious or steadily employed or a top marksman at the police range.  He wears chaps and thongs and his skinniness like a badge of individuality even though he’s lined up on a stage like part of a set.  

It wasn’t a real date, of course, it was a source gone sweet with really good French toast.  

And she’s at the club purely for business, purely to convince the source who knows something to talk to her, and she’s playing 2048 on her phone rather than look at the stripped down police officer on stage.  She wonders what her source meant about Tarzan.  It probably means something about the drugs, no longer stuffing with cocaine because he’s dead or disappeared or shifted to another step in the operation.  Does it mean that Drago is no longer dealing in cocaine?  Because that’ll change the investigation entirely, drive them away from Colombia to focus on the Bulgarian sources that have proven far more difficult to locate.  She counts the money in her wallet, wondering if she can afford her source for five minutes and if she’ll have to pay Ruffnut too for the privacy.  

A Wildman yell echoes through the speakers with a crackle of static and Astrid’s head whips around towards the stage just as the first chords of Welcome to the Jungle blare and the curtains whip open.  Hiccup is grinning, like this is his best joke yet, shiny and wiry and holding a snake prop around his shoulders.  

The snake prop moves, pink tongue flicking at the stage light as he winds around Hiccup’s arm.  

Something about the contact makes Hiccup smile wider and he starts to sway, looking for the beat for a moment before thrusting his hips forward.  The snake coils around his chest, shiny black scales against pale, wiry muscle, ant it makes Hiccup look better somehow.  More real, less like a goofy kid up on stage and more…experienced. His leopard printed loincloth flips up in front and Astrid finds herself staring, her throat suddenly dry.  

If Tarzan isn’t stuffing…

She blinks and takes a sip of her sprite, sighing and looking back up at him like he’s evidence, looking for white powder or a frantic glaze across his eyes.  His eyes that she knows are vibrant green, but now just look black in the shadow of the lights as he spots her, his grin widening. The muscles in his lean thighs flex and that loin cloth flips to the side, exposing something glittery and small underneath.  

He points at her.  

He lifts the snake from his shoulders and it winds around his thigh, climbing his stomach and pushing that loincloth out of the way, almost revealing something.  He turns around, and it’s that ass again, made impossibly more alluring by the boa curling against his lower back.  

He teases, pulling the loincloth an inch down his hip.  Two.  The cleft of his thigh barely visible as he turns back around letting the strap snap back into place.  Astrid licks her lips, averting her eyes and trying to remember how long this song is, looking around the club for suspicious behavior. It’s too hot in here, stuffy, the back of Astrid’s silky dress sticking to her spine and tugging, a dragging whisper across her skin.  She shivers and drains her drink, chewing on her lower lip.  

Hiccup is looking at her when the song ends, his crazy hair matted down to the sides of his sweaty forehead.  He grins, an honest, boyish grin, a grin of a guy in a diner with excellent French toast.

“This one is on the house, Miss.”  A drink clanks to the counter behind her and she nods absently, taking a sip before asking what it is, tasting vodka and brushing it off, because even she can admit she can’t investigate right now, with her heart in her throat and Hiccup still smiling at her as he jogs down the stairs, pushing through the crowd towards her.  

“So, what did you think?” He stops in front of her and does a turn, a few beads of sweat dripping down his shoulders through the muscled grooves around his spine.  She reaches out like she’s going to touch him, diverting her hand to her drink at the last moment and taking a gulp.  Cheap vodka, leaving a nasty aftertaste in her mouth, but it’s wet and better than talking and saying something she’ll regret.  “I’ll give you a moment to compose your thoughts.”  

“Is that your snake?”

“Well, even if he weren’t, he would be now that we’re so intimately acquainted,” Hiccup laughs, kissing the top of the snake’s head and wiping transferred baby oil from his lips. “This is Toothless.  But it was Eret’s idea to, you know, oil me up and wrap him around my naked body.”  

“Almost naked.”  She bites her lip, taking another sip of the drink to try and compose herself.  “Not that—“

“Are you alright?”  He smirks, “you look a little feverish.”  

“It suits you, alright?” She waves her hand towards him.  

“You just gestured to all of me.”  

“Almost all of you.”  

“Do you want to get out of here?”  He pulls a handful of money from his underwear and she notices a ten dollar bill among the sea of ones.  “I think I made enough money.”  

“I feel bad for whoever you’re going to hand that too.”  

“Ooh, ouch.  You hurt me,” he smiles, stroking the snake’s head and leaning against the bar.  “Seriously. I’m starving.  Let’s go get some French toast.  From that smell of that drink, you aren’t working tonight.”  

“My friend did drive me here,” she mulls it over for a second, not long enough at all, really, because it makes sense to go with him, doesn’t it?  It makes sense to help him wipe all of that oil off and—“Yeah, let’s get out of here,” she stands up too quickly, fumbling for the edge of the bar.

“Well, I do have to go get dressed first,” he runs his hand through his hair and grimaces when it comes back sticky with crunchy gel.  “It’s not quite the jungle out there.”  

“I’ll be waiting,” Astrid drains her drink with a smirk, crunching on an ice cube and watching him disappear through the door next to the stage.  

As soon as he’s gone, the room starts spinning, slowly at first, like an amusement park ride gaining speed, then faster and faster, the bar suddenly slippery beneath her fingers. The bartender takes her glass away, mumbling what sounds like an apology, and it goes into her ears strangely, like she’s underwater.  Maybe she is, it’s harder to breathe than it should be, the weight of the atmosphere pressing down on her shoulders, coaxing her to lay down.  

Someone grabs her hand, someone terse, unforgiving.  They drag her away from the bar a few stumbling steps before a voice she recognizes steps in.  Her source,  _Eret_.  

“It’s ok, Jackson.  I’ll take her to Drago.”  

“He sent me specifically.”

“That’s because he trusts you,” Eret grabs her other arm around her bicep, taking some of her weight. “I’ll take her, don’t you have more important things to do?”  

“I…I mean, he does usually send you to fetch them.”  

“See?  I was just fucking off, if I’d been there like I was supposed to be—”

“Yeah man,” the other man punches Eret’s thick arm, his fist moving like lightning, so fast Astrid can barely see it as the world flips on its axis and starts spinning the other way. “Stop shirking your duties.  Some of us have money to make.”  

“Go get ‘em, Tiger.” Eret’s hand wraps around under her armpits and he starts dragging her away, scooping her purse from the bar.  “This yours?”  

She tries to say yes, but it’s hard, her eyes drifting halfway shut.  

“Nope.  Keep your eyes open.  Don’t close your eyes.”  He pulls her phone out of her purse and dials, all of his motions impossibly quick and sure.  She feels like she’s breathing water, her lungs heavy in her chest.  “Get out here, man, we’ve got to go.” 


	9. Chapter 9

“Get out here, man, we’ve got to go,” Eret says through Astrid’s phone, unusually gruff. “Now.  If you aren’t at my car in sixty seconds, I’m leaving without you. Hurry.”  Eret hangs up and Hiccup scrambles for his duffel bag, tucking Toothless’s tail inside of it and jogging out of the back door.  He notices immediately that he forgot his jacket but ignores it as the silence in the parking lot amplifies his dread.  

What if Eret is hurt? Some crazy woman stabbed him for his abs or something.  But why would he be using Astrid’s phone?  

He runs around the corner to see a booty short clad Eret ignoring drunken wolf-whistles and loading something into the backseat of his car.  The something pushes back and a blonde head pops up above his shoulder.  Astrid.  

“What’s going on?”  

“Help me get her in the car.”  

Hiccup doesn’t question it, dropping his duffle gently on the passenger seat and opening the other back door, instantly seeing the situation more clearly.  Eret is holding a frighteningly limp Astrid by her shoulders and knees, struggling to get her into the backseat.  She struggles just enough to make it difficult, her head flopping loosely from side to side.  

“What’s wrong with her?” Hiccup slides into the backseat himself and reaches for Astrid’s shoulders, stronger than usual with the adrenaline pulsing through his veins. She’s dead weight in his hands, leaning back against his shoulder as Eret curls her legs into the car and shuts the door.  

Astrid is heavy and too warm, her head lolling back against his chest as Eret jumps into the front seat and guns it out of the parking lot.  

“Eret, what the hell is wrong with her?”  

“Someone slipped something in her drink.  Something bad.”  

“Did you see who?” Hiccup hits his head on the window when Eret accelerates through a too sharp turn, his ancient engine whining. Astrid groans, her hand listlessly flopping against her forehead.  “How do you know it’s bad—”

“Keep her awake, alright?” Eret swears as he runs a stop sign at twenty over the speed limit.  “Try and get her talking.”  

“He’s not normally such a terrifying driver,” Hiccup shakes Astrid’s shoulder, earning another irritated groan.  “Come on. No urge to make fun of Eret’s driving? It’s an easy target.”  

Her head slides along his arm so she’s looking at him, all dilated, glassy pupils hemmed with the faintest ring of blue.  She mumbles something.  

“What was that?”  He rubs her upper arm because it seems like the least offensive thing he can touch.  She’s clammy and sweating, her skin flushed and blotchy.  

“Your hair is ridiculous.”

“I only got half of the gel out,” he pushes her hair out of her face and meets Eret’s worried gaze in the rear view mirror.  “Eret used half a fucking tube.  I think he just likes playing with my hair.”  

Only Astrid laughs, a drunken snort that seems to exhaust her.  

“Hey, hey,” Hiccup pats her cheek until she opens her eyes.  “We’re almost there.  Don’t you want to see my place?”  

“Your place?”  Her lip quirks into a clumsy smirk.  “This is only our second date.”  

“What can I say?  I move fast.”  

“I’ve already seen you mostly naked.”  She exhales pointedly, like the air isn’t listening to her.  A slow, almost lazy hand reaches for his sweatshirt’s zipper and he nudges it away.  

“You have to wait for that,” he gulps, because he wants to smile but really shouldn’t.  “You have to be fully conscious, or else it’s just wasted on you.”  

“Tarzan isn’t stuffing anymore,” she inhales, the start of a snore, and Hiccup rubs her arm again, as hard as he dares.

Eret skids to a stop in front of his house and jumps out of the car, lifting Astrid from the back seat like she weighs nothing.  It’s nearly choreographed, the way that Hiccup collects his duffel and what must be Astrid’s purse, jogging ahead and holding the door open.   Eret carries her to the bathroom and sets her on the linoleum in front of the toilet.  

“Astrid, you have to throw up,” Eret shoves Hiccup’s toothbrush into her hand and wraps her loose fingers around the handle.  “Use the handle.  Come on.”

“M’fine,” Astrid tries to stand, blinking hard against the light.  

“No, you have to throw up. There was something in your drink.”

“Shitty vodka,” she protests and Eret looks between her and Hiccup for a second, his face apologetic. He kneels next to her and shoves a finger down her throat.  She gags and he swears, yanking bleeding knuckles back to his chest.  

“She bit me!”  

“You shoved your hand down her throat!”  Hiccup sets the bags down and kneels next to her as she coughs, clumsily wiping blood from her lip.  “What if she just sleeps it off?”  

Eret shakes his head, “not with this.”  

“How do you know what it is if you didn’t see it?”  

“I just—she needs to throw up five minutes ago.”  

“It’s…” she exhales, shakily, her next words tinged with as much significance as her drugged mind can muster.  “It’s  _Blood_  isn’t it?”  

“You have to throw up,” Eret places the toothbrush back in her hand and she nods, her fingers shaking. Hiccup gathers her hair at the nape of her neck, because it’s all he can do, looking to Eret as she pushes the handle against the back of her throat.  

Once it starts, it doesn’t seem to want to stop, and Hiccup keeps his gaze fixed on Eret, watching relief spread across the man’s face.  Astrid dry heaves twice before sighing and flopping sideways into Hiccup’s lap, her hair slipping from his grasp.  

Eret flushes the toilet and stands, wetting a ratty washcloth and handing it to Hiccup who nervously cleans her face.  

“I’m not driving anywhere tonight,” she mumbles, curling in on herself.  

“Keep her awake as long as you can, try and get her to drink some water.  I think there’s some bread, it wouldn’t hurt if she could keep some of that down.”  Eret steps over them, pulling on the pair of jeans that had been hanging on his bedroom doorknob and reaching for a sweatshirt.  “I’ve got to go back to the club and grab my stuff.”  

Hiccup nods, still and unsure as the front door shuts and the lock turns, enclosing the silence that’s suddenly awkward.  

“This uh…isn’t how I pictured inviting you over.”  

“I thought we’d visit the strip club bathroom before this one,” she laughs, her hand fisting in the front of his shirt as she struggles to get comfortable.  

“Ok, let’s get you some water,” he laughs, wishing Eret had helped him move her before leaving as he stands and struggles to drag her with him.  She’s unwilling to walk, her feet floppy and light on the floor.  “Help me out, Astrid.  I’m not Eret, I can’t give you the rag doll treatment.”  

“Ugh, I’m soaked,” she wrinkles her nose, scratching at the sweaty hair at the nape of her neck.  “I should change.”  

“Something tells me you don’t have a change of clothes in your purse,” he grunts, lifting her over the bags and stumbling to the couch.  Toothless is concerned, squirming out of the duffel across the ground and Hiccup lifts him into his cage, adjusting the lamp to warm his favorite rock.

“Do I  _need_  a change of clothes?”  She’s smiling at him, the kind of smile he should be thrilled about, her eyes half closed as she stretches out on the couch, her dress riding up her thighs.  

“I’ll get you some clothes,” he looks away, tripping over the duffel’s strap and bending down to the pile of his clothes stacked on a thrift store chair in the corner.  A pair of boxers and a tee shirt should be good enough, right?  Like—why didn’t he practice any of this before it was weird and heavy and the most unattainably professional woman he’s ever seen was unbuttoned on his couch? “Will this work?”  He shows her the clothes and she seems to clear up for a moment, nodding.  “I’ll…I’ll leave you to change.”  

“Are you sure you don’t want to help?”  She grins at him, uncrossing her legs, her skirt sliding further up her thighs.  

“Nope.  I want that date in the strip club bathroom first,” he blushes, “because…because date order is important to me.  I’ll leave you to it.”  

He beats himself up the entire time he stands in the bathroom, staring at his reflection in the mirror, crazy hair, smears of oil lingering on his cheekbones.  Tired.  Dark circles rimming his eyes and making him look skinnier, older.  He looks like the loser his dad always warned him about. He looks like he belongs on this bad side of town.  

He opens the medicine cabinet and stares at an expired bottle of ibuprofen instead.  

Astrid struggles to change, growling in frustration that sounds more like her than anything else she’s said tonight, and he wonders what would have happened if the night had gone as planned.  If they’d laughed more over French toast and coffee.  Would she have ended up seeing his couch anyway?  Would he have ended up at her place?  What’s her place like?  

Her phone rings, vibrating in her purse on the floor and he picks it up, seeing ‘Ruffnut’ on the caller id.

“Hello?”  

“Who the fuck is this?” A woman on the other side of the phone launches into full attack mode.  “It better be that hot jungle man with the massive, black snake—”

“Yup, you got him.”  

“Oh,” the woman falters. “Well…I hope at least Astrid has some fun.  Tell her that next time it’s my turn, and if she can ditch work for you, she can ditch it for me.”  

“And I should tell her that verbatim?”  

“Wow, a stripper whipping out those SAT words.”  The woman snorts, “Let me guess, you’re dancing your way through college.”  

“Hiccup!”  Astrid calls from the couch, still frustrated, and the woman on the other side of the phone laughs.  

“I’ll leave you to it, snake boy.”  

He hangs up the phone and sets it back in her purse, scratching the back of his head and daring to peek at her.  She’s wearing his boxers and tee-shirt, her dress crumpled on the floor, her hair twisted over one shoulder.  

“What’s up?”  

“I can’t unhook my bra,” she pouts, turning to him with only a hint of that dangerously foggy flirtation.

“Can’t you just sleep in it?”  

“Why are you so afraid to touch me?”  She grins at him, “do I make you nervous?”  

“Here,” He doesn’t look, lifting his shirt up her back and trying not to touch her as he fumbles for the clasp of her bra.  It’s lace, the hooks tangled in the fabric just enough to make his life horribly difficult, and he’s about to cave and look down when it finally comes free.  

“It’s ok,” she lays back on the couch, sliding the bra out of one sleeve of his shirt, dropping it on the floor near her dress.  “We can practice that later.”  

“Oh-hoh, alright,” he rubs his face, like he can wipe away the blush, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I’m going to get you some water.”

When he comes back from the kitchen, she’s asleep, curled into a ball with her head on her arm, smaller than she’s ever really looked.  She looks tired and young, eye makeup smudged on her cheeks, blonde hair tangling in her eyelashes.  She’s snoring, a light, whistling snore, her hair drifting to and fro from her nose. He brushes it out of her face, tucking it behind her ear and letting his fingers linger for a second too long against her pulse point, her heartbeat slowed to normal.  She wrinkles her nose, shifting to get comfortable.  

“Please be back to teasing me in the morning,” he whispers, setting the glass of water on the floor where he figures she’ll reach for it first.  Then he grabs the pillow resting by her blue painted toenails and curls up on the floor, facing away from her.  It’s a long time before he falls asleep. 


	10. Chapter 10

When Astrid’s eyes open, she’s not sure where she is.  There’s a window, dust drifting through slits of buttery yellow light that throbs in the back of her eye sockets like hot brands.  Brands.  Eret. Throwing up in Hiccup’s bathroom. The night before flits in front of her eyes in painfully bright flashes and she presses her fist to her eyes, inhaling that baby powder scent that reminds her of Hiccup. 

Her mouth tastes horrible, sour and musty and she clears her sore throat, squinting her eyes open again and looking around the tiny, dingy living room.  She sits up, her feet bumping against something soft and warm and she looks down to see Hiccup curled on the floor using his arm as a pillow. His hair is sticking up in fifty directions, matted around the sides of his face with too much leftover hair gel. He looks younger, his skin pale and translucent, dark circles stark against the freckles on his cheeks.  

His sweatshirt moves and she thinks he’s waking up until a vaguely familiar black snake pokes its head from his baggy sleeve.  Its pink tongue flicks towards her, a silent motion of recognition, before it retreats back into the warmth of his jacket.  Hiccup grumbles in his sleep, hugging the snake closer to him and shifting on the floor.  

He frowns in his sleep, completely, utterly, obviously uncomfortable. She looks around and sees a few bags around the coffee table, a stack of clothes on the chair in the corner. An all too familiar Viking hat on the linoleum kitchen counter, essentially a life scattered and spread out across a tiny living room.  It’s obvious that Hiccup has been sleeping on the couch, and it’s more obvious that he spent the night on the cold, hard floor for her comfort.  

It’s a decidedly not stripper thing to do.  

It’s  _gentlemanly_.  

She nudges her foot against his shoulder, her toe prodding the sharp rise of his shoulder-blade.  He groans in his sleep and tugs his snake closer, his hand under his face pushing his mouth halfway open.  He’s drooling and it makes her smile, even though the motion tugs at the sorest part of her brain.  She rubs her forehead and clears her throat again, trying to dispel the phlegmy fog.  

“Wha’?”  He jerks awake, sitting up halfway and holding the snake tight to his chest, “just a—oh,” he makes bleary eye contact and his jaw falls halfway open.  He snaps it shut and drops his hand away from his chest, Toothless pooling in his sweatshirt like he stuffed a volleyball under it.  “Good morning.”  He frowns at her for a second longer before his eyebrows furrow into concern that she shouldn’t think is this adorable first thing in the morning.  “How are you feeling?  Are you ok?  I mean, I guess you’re sitting up and—what’s your name?”  

“Really?  How many girls have stolen your couch this week? I thought we were friends,” her voice is hoarse and unfamiliar, and he starts unfurling the snake from his jacket with purpose, leaning sideways to set him in his tank.  

“I know, bud, just for a little while,” he strokes the snake’s head and turns back to her, rolling surprisingly nimbly to his knees, “seriously, you scared me last night, what’s your name?  What year is it?”  He pauses in front of her, resting his hands on her knees and peering too closely at her face.  Her lips twitch.  

“What are you doing?”

“Checking for signs of concussion.”  

“I don’t remember falling,” she frowns, trying to piece the night before together more completely in her mind.  

“No, you’re just being almost nice this morning, I figured you must have hit your head.”  

He’s too close, three inches away, and her breath must smell awful, and when she glances down she sees a stripe of leopard loincloth peeking out of the top of his sweatpants.  

She wonders what would happen if she kissed him.  

“Can you get me some water?” She clears her throat for effect and his hands jolt from her legs like she burned him.  

“Yeah, water.  Of course.  You were supposed to drink a lot last night—”

“I think that’s the whole problem.”  

“Very funny,” he trips over something in the kitchen and she hears the sink turn on.  “A lot of water.  Are you hungry?  You should eat.  You…do you remember last night?”  He hands her a glass of water.  “You—I can’t believe it, I mean, I guess I can, I always knew that I worked at a skeevy place, but not a poison a girl with roofies kind of place.”  

She licks the back of her teeth, “do you think it’s still in my system?”  

She’s been trying to get a sample for months, everyone in her office has been, this could be her chance.

“Given that your pupils are still twice their normal size—”

“Do you have a container? A cup with a lid? Something?”  She sets the glass aside and lurches to her feet, squinting her eyes shut against the wave of dizziness.  He grabs her upper arm, his hands warm and slightly rough against her arm, like all of that oiling up has done absolutely nothing for years’ worth of calluses that make no sense.  What does he do outside of the club?  He’s always been too young and…sweet for that place, and she tries to imagine him doing manual labor, working with his hands.  Her stomach churns.  

Sample.  She needs to get a sample.  

“Umm, I have yesterday’s McDonald’s cup?”  

“Can you rinse it out?” She grabs the arm of the couch for support and shuffles to the bathroom.  

“Uh sure, but why does this make me nervous?”  

“I need a sample,” she explains as hastily as she can, because Hiccup doesn’t know who she is and what she does, what brought her to the club in the first place.  Suddenly, this uncomfortable, strange morning is something she’s worried about tarnishing.  

“Are you going to pee in the cup that held my sprite?”  

She shrugs and holds her hand out, “I need…” information.  To keep her job.  To avoid feeling like a silly girl, like a stupid victim so overwhelmed by a ridiculous, leopard print clad package that she forgot about her job completely.  But it’s worse than that, it’s not his package or his glittery, oiled up torso, it’s  _him_.  And now she’s drugged, “I need revenge.”  

“I can’t say this is the most typical second date of my life,” he hands her the cup and shuts the door.

She puts the lid on the cup a few seconds later, leaving it on the sink and spreading some of the toothpaste onto her finger, smearing it on her teeth and rinsing out her mouth. She spends a moment too long looking in the mirror, at her haggard, pale face, wiping the makeup from under her eyes.   Her pupils are dilated, a vein visible blue in her temple beneath pallid skin.  

“Are you ok in there?” Hiccup asks, and she hears him lean against the door from the other side.  

“I’m fine,” she opens the door, tucking her hair behind her ear and sucking in a sharp breath at how close he is.  Maybe it’s the drugs, the residual high in her system, maybe it’s the situation, bizarre and oddly, ridiculously comfortable.  

“You look kind of spaced out there,” he smiles, resting his hand on her shoulder, “let’s go back to the couch.”  

She kisses him, a peck that should be embarrassing, the kind of kiss someone gives a long-time boyfriend on the way out the door.  But it shocks like lightening, a bolt of electricity straight down her spine, grounding her to the floor.  It’s a breath of fresh air, and he’s not Tarzan or a cowboy or a vampire, he’s just Hiccup, the guy with the stupid name and haphazard glitter stuck in his stubble.

“Yeah, that’s a good idea.” She brushes past him and walks ahead, grinning when he stumbles after her, his hand clasping again over her shoulder.

“Hey, wait, what was that?”

“You need me to explain what that was?”  She sits down, and it’s all so normal, all so treacherously comfortable.  “Are you sure you aren’t the one that hit your head.”  

“Maybe I did, because you didn’t just kiss me, that’s impossible.”  He laughs, running his fingers through his hair and leaving it a half-tamed gelled helmet.  “Why would you ever do that?”  

“I don’t know,” she shrugs, picking up the glass of water and taking a sip as he sits next to her. “You tell me.”  

“Oh no,” he bumps his shoulder against hers, “it’s because of my body isn’t it?  I knew it was only a matter of time before you started treating me as a sexual object—”

She kisses him again, because her mouth isn’t so dry and awful, and it’s some sort of torture being this close to him and barely touching him.  His hand rises to cup her chin, his fingers tracing the corner of her jaw as he holds her like she’s delicate, his tongue warm and wandering against hers.  

The door bursts open and they jerk apart to see Eret, standing there with his hands tucked deep in his pockets.  His eyes are too wide, too shiny and his lip curls back from his teeth in an unfamiliar sneer, “get a room.”  

“Dude, are you alright?” Hiccup stands halfway and Eret waves him off.  

“I can see you’re  _busy_ ,” the words is slurred, buzzing.  He pushes past the pair of them and slams his bedroom door, leaving them both in suddenly awkward silence.  


	11. Chapter 11

“I don’t know, man,” Hiccup stares too intently at the cereal pouring into the bowl, shaking the box rhythmically.  “It’s like…it’s not a conventional date, but it wasn’t our first date—Hey, bud, snakes don’t like cheerios,” he nudges Toothless’s head with his bare foot as the snake tries to climb his leg, “but we kissed twice and she took a nap on me, which sort of screams ‘relationship’, but then she called her friend to come and pick her up, and wouldn’t a  _boyfriend_  drop her off?”  He pours milk into the bowl, taking a bite and frowning around the food, “not that I have a car—”

Eret snorts, loud enough to be an interruption, turning up the volume on the TV.  

‘…Senator Haddock spoke at Northwood Community College today…’

“Ok…” Hiccup sets his spoon down, the anxious, excited churn of his stomach overshadowed by all the too familiar annoyance of being ignored.  “Or you can turn up Senator McAsshole over me.  That’s cool.”  

“What?  Do you have some sort of issue with Senator Haddock?” Eret enunciates strangely, his vowels too long, his consonants clumsy.  He stares past Hiccup at something behind him, jaw flexing erratically, chin flushed around cool toned ink.  

“Are you ok?—”

“Daddy issues, wasn’t it?” Eret’s smirk is cruel, unfamiliar, his pupils dilating like slashing Hiccup’s biggest secret wide open is positively thrilling.  

“How did you figure that out?”  

“I’m not as dumb as everyone thinks I am!”  He grits his teeth, yanking at his ponytail hard enough that it must hurt.  His arms flex, veins prominent and light blue, and Hiccup feels like he’s been slapped.  

“What the hell is going on with you?”  

“I’m going out,” Eret jumps to his feet, herky jerky like a glitch in a video game, every one of his joints rigid.  He grabs his keys, stuffing his phone deeper into his pocket and striding to the door. “And don’t worry, I’m sure Astrid will vote for your Dad.  You’ve done some really great lobbying,” he grinds against the edge of the door in a clumsy, exaggerated way that’s insulting, rubbing salt into a fresh wound. Eret slams the door behind him and the house is too quiet.  

Hiccup walks to work six hours later, leaving Toothless at home because the last thing he needs is something to happen to the snake walking an hour through the slush.  He gets dressed in a daze, alone, running oily fingers through his hair and trying to achieve that Wildman charm without Eret’s hair gel.  

Then again, the performance isn’t going to be the same without his big, black snake.

He chuckles to himself and looks around, looking for someone to ask what’s funny.  Looking for Eret to giggle with him like it’s ok to genuinely enjoy middle school humor.  Jackson gives him a look like he’s not all there, muttering weirdo under his breath and sprinkling baby powder onto his thighs as he wiggles into leather briefs.

Hiccup feels alone in a way he hasn’t since he left home.  Eret doesn’t see him the same way anymore, he’s just…he’s just some Senator’s brat son, fucking off for a while before…finishing school, or something. He wants an apology he’s never going to get, an apology he doesn’t deserve.  He checks his phone in case it’s magically appeared and sees two texts from Astrid.  

‘At the club in disguise. Don’t recognize me.’  And one from a minute later, ‘delete this immediately.’

It feels like he’s been kicked in the chest and he swears, stomping his bare foot and wincing at the cold concrete floor.  “Really?” He deletes the messages, muttering under his breath and glaring at Jackson when he says something a little less flattering than ‘weirdo’.  He walks out onto the stage with a roaring cheer and a muffled ‘whips and chains excite me’ before the door slams shut.  

“What the fuck is she thinking?”  Hiccup shakes his head, yelling through the door of the DJ booth to shove Welcome to the Jungle to the end of the night and trotting to the side door.  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he ducks into the crowd, taking the straightest path to the bar and running into more drunk women than he can count on the way.  One tries to grab his crotch and he elbows her off, bursting into the comparative calm of the bar.  

Astrid’s disguise – a brown wig and what appears to be abound half of a dress—might be passable if her expression weren’t so serious.  And talking to the friend she always comes here with sure isn’t doing her any favors.  

“I don’t really know what you expected, Ruff,” Astrid cradles her forehead in her hand.  

“I just thought it’d be a little more like Pretty Woman,” Ruff shrugs, crossing her arms and looking embarrassed.  “But it’s not.  At all.”

“I don’t know what you expected,” Astrid repeats, slower, “you paid a stripper for sex—”

“What’s going on?” Hiccup steps up, wrapping his arm too possessively around Astrid’s shoulder and knocking the glass closest to her onto the floor behind the bar.  

“Hey Jungle Jim, that was my drink!”  Ruff stares at Hiccup’s arm and her face droops, nonsensically sad.  “God, why do you get everything?”  She punches Astrid’s arm, “hot stripper that you don’t even have to pay.”  

“That’s everything?” Astrid cocks her head, shrugging against Hiccup’s arm and making him grab on tighter.  "Because you can have him, he doesn’t follow directions.”  Astrid glares at him like she wishes he would catch on fire.

“Neither does Eret.”  

“What?”  Hiccup frowns, “you paid—“

“Yes, I paid your friend for sex, and you spilled my drink and this is the worst night ever, thank you for your contribution.  Do I pay you right here?”  She shoves a folded dollar into the front of his thong and he flushes, looking down at Astrid.  She glares at him.  

“Go home, Ruff.” Astrid adjusts her dress, pulling the neckline up and the skirt down, “didn’t I tell you not to recognize me?”  

“That was pointlessly mean,” cool relief surges through Hiccup’s chest and he sighs, “I know you haven’t been drugged.  Although I have absolutely no idea why you’d come back after that—”

She silences him with a too flirtatious hand sliding down his chest to the top of his loincloth, fiddling with the edge of the dollar Ruff left there.  “Shut up, everyone is looking.  I told you to ignore me.”  

He glances at the camera in the corner, because she’s right, of course she’s right, and he thinks of his contract and what happens if he violates it.  He can’t let her know how bound he is to this place, and she needs to know how badly she needs to leave.  He already skipped a performance tonight and he can’t be seen dragging a patron outside and telling them never to come back.  

“Leave.  I’ll call you later.”  

And it hits him, thinking of Eret and the rumors and anything but Astrid sitting here by herself.

“I know somewhere private.”

“I’m not leaving.”  

He leans in close to her ear, a flirtatious hand on her knee, “the camera in the men’s room has a broken microphone and it can’t see the handicapped stall.”  

“Strip club bathroom,” she laughs.  “I seem to remember part of saying something like that.  How much does a visit to the men’s room cost?”   _Astrid_  doesn’t ask, some official woman with a straight, sober face who doesn’t look during lap dances asks and Hiccup frowns.  

“Free.”  

She frowns, “Drago—”

“I don’t care about Drago,” he hisses, urging her to her feet in a way that he hopes looks natural. “I want to talk to you.”  

“Fine,” she glares at him, taking his hand and dragging him towards the bathroom, scoffing at a few women who giggle in the line for the ladies’ as she drags him into the men’s room. She slams the door of the handicapped stall behind them and crosses her arms, pacing completely unaware of how the position makes her dress tighter.  He looks up from her chest and frowns.  “I told you not to recognize me, it’s a matter of my safety—”

“If you cared about your safety, you wouldn’t be here.”  

“You  _work_  here,” she cocks her hip, yanking her wig off and setting it on the back of the toilet.  She scratches her head, golden hair oddly green in the fluorescent as she paces.  Without the wig, the rest of her is more visible, smooth, firm lines under the sequined fabric of her dress making his mouth suddenly dry.  He swallows hard and clings to what he wants to talk about.  

For the second time, Astrid has made a normally comfortable work uniform restrictive.  

“No one drugged me.”  

“Yet,” she sighs, “you know what, Hiccup?  What if I said that I was helping people by being here?  What if I said it could save lives?”  

“What?”  He wipes sweaty palms on his thighs and they slip off, slick with oil.  “By trading yours?”  

“Yeah?”  She shakes her head, “if that’s how you’re going to think about it, how many lives is my life worth?”  

He doesn’t think about it like he should.  The greater good should mean something, but when he tries to picture whatever grandiose circumstances she’s talking about, he can’t get past the fact that she wouldn’t be there to see it.  

“All of them.”  

“What?”  

“Your life is worth all of the other lives.”  It’s awkward when he’s searching for profound and he tries again.  “I know what you’re trying to say, but—but you aren’t just one life to me, like everyone else is.  And I know—well, look around my office,” he gestures around the bathroom, “I know I’m not the kind of upstanding guy that gets to decide things like this, but—but you’re not sacrificial.  To me.  At least.”

She stares at him for a moment, shaking her head mutely, “you don’t get it, do you?”  

“I don’t want to get it.”

She kisses him, hands fumbling over slippery, oiled up shoulders as she presses him into the bathroom wall.  And it’s not sick Astrid reassurance, it’s not gentle and sweet, falling asleep on his shoulder.  It’s raw, the scrape of sequins on her dress against his chest, her fingernails biting into his sides.  

“Why do you have to be so slippery?”  She breathes against his cheek, her fingers tracing their way up his chest, flirting with the always too evident lines of his ribs.  

His hands land against her waist, tentative at first then curling in her dress when she doesn’t shove him off.  She leans into him, her fingers tugging at the waistband of his loincloth experimentally, and he’s suddenly embarrassed of the thong underneath.  And the bathroom.  And the fact that they’re at a strip club, where he works, and—and she’s here, isn’t she?  She knows about the thong, and she dragged him to the bathroom, and she met him when he had a sheriff’s badge decorating his package.  She knows what she’s getting into and she’s getting into it anyway.

His hand slides down over her hip, flirting with the edge of her dress, brushing against the outside of her thigh, and she moans, a throaty, frustrated sound that reverberates in his core. Her chest is pressed against his tantalizingly tight and he brushes the swell of her breast peeking above the rough fabric with his thumb, earning what sounds like a growl as she nips at his lower lip.  

“I have to say, this is better when you aren’t drugged.”  

“Who says I’m not drugged?” She laughs, kissing his neck, pulling away with a grimace and trying to wipe away the oil on her face.  

“Careful, you’re getting slippery too.”  

The thirteen year old boy inside of him who has had altogether too much screen time lately laughs.

Astrid cocks her head, one of her dress straps falling off of her shoulder.  She goes to fix it but stops herself, grinning at him and raising an eyebrow, “then you better make it worth it.”  

He pushes her against the brick wall, her head landing right in the middle of ‘Cindy’s’ phone number, in case he needs to call someone for a good time, and kisses her, his hand tugging at the fallen strap of her dress, asking.  She nods and slides both straps off of her shoulders, gasping into his mouth when he tugs the dress down and cups her breast.  Her nipple hardens against his palm and he brushes his thumb across it, smiling a bit too widely when she groans, her hands sliding down his back.  She tugs at his loincloth—god, loincloth, this is a story to tell the grandkids—and he winces.  

“What did I do?”  

“Nothing,” he shakes his head, repositioning himself against her hip.  “It’s just—this is meant to fit nice and tight when there are bright lights and screaming women old enough to be my mom.”  

Her hand slides around to his front and cups his bulge gently, too gently, flirtatious in a way that makes him buck his hips against her instinctually.  

“Sounds like you should take it off,” she bites her lip and tugs it down, “holy hell, that is tight,” she pauses, snapping the elastic against his ass, “am I about to be wildly disappointed?”  

“No,” he laughs, “I’ll have you know I’m downright comparable in the locker room.”  

“So guys really do measure,” she slides his underwear down until they fall on their own and wraps her hand around him, pumping slowly.  His knees tremble, because how long has it been?  A month since he met her, four since he left home.  Longer than he can count with her fingers doing  _that_ , and he leans forward against the wall, his head on her shoulder.  He ducks down and kisses her nipple, sucking it gently into his mouth and flicking his tongue across it.  She grips him tighter, pumping with more purpose, her thumb smoothing across the tip and making him lightheaded.  

“Stop,” he kisses up the center of her chest to her neck, nuzzling her earlobe as his hand finds its way under her dress.  “I need a minute.”  

“Hurry up,” she digs her fingernails into his shoulders, arching away from Cindy’s phone number, her breasts tantalizingly barely hidden by the neckline of her dress as it rides back up.  

“You almost sound like you’ve been thinking about this for a while,” he pulls her underwear aside and bites his lip, resting his forehead against her temple and fumbling for a second.

“Considering the second time we met,” she sighs, and he takes it as a good sign, focusing on that spot, “you were literally giving me a lap dance…mmm.”  

“What?  And that made you think of fucking me in the strip club bathroom?”  

She answers with a moan, because he seems to have found the right spot, rubbing gently with his thumb as two fingers slip inside of her.  She grinds down against his hand and laughs breathlessly, her hands twining together at the nape of his neck, “I suppose you don’t have anything in your loincloth pocket.”  

He kisses her, curling his fingers carefully and pressing harder with his thumb.  She tugs almost too hard on his hair, wrapping her leg around his and grinding against his thigh.  “All I’ve got is a clean bill of health from the clinic that was here two weeks ago.”

She reaches down and grabs him, pensively, her thumb stroking the vein on the bottom with maddeningly precise movements.  

“And you haven’t been with anyone since then?”  

“I haven’t thought about anyone since then,” he laughs, averting eye contact, because saying things like that makes this personal.  

She stretches up onto her toes, guiding him towards her and looping her leg around his waist.  He supports himself on the wall above her shoulder, blotting out Cindy’s phone number entirely and lining himself up. He kisses her, sliding in with a careful, slow stroke, groaning as she envelops him entirely.  She gasps, her heel digging into his back, her hand fisting in his hair.  

He starts to move, slowly, carefully, savoring the way it feels, the way she breathes into his ear, the warm press of her chest against his.  He grabs her hip and tugs her into him, a rhythmic slap of skin filling the room. God, he hopes no one comes in, or if they do, he hopes she doesn’t notice.  Her hands slip down his back, cupping his ass and pulling her more tightly to him as she arches into his motion.  

He rests his forehead against hers, trying to maintain his pace as his limbs start to feel like molten lead.  Her hand finds its way between them and he can feel it glancing across him as she touches herself.  She sighs something like his name and it makes his heart race, her pulse echoing alongside as she arches into him, springing taut with a moan as she falls over the edge.  It leaves her tighter and warmer, softer somehow and he’s three desperate strokes behind, hugging her too tightly as he finishes, his face pressed to the side of her neck.  

She sighs, her leg softening drooping to the ground.  Her hand cards through his hair, slow, careful, and she tugs on the end of it gently, “you’re right.  I—I can figure out something else, I won’t come in again.”  

“Great,” he smiles, slipping out of her and taking a wobbly step backwards, bending down to pull up his underwear, “next time I’ll just call Cindy,” he points to the wall and she punches his arm, too gently, pulling her dress straps back into place.  “No, but really, thank you.”  

“You’re right,” she shrugs, setting her wig back in place and trying to tuck her mussed hair underneath it.  “I don’t suppose you know if the emergency exit alarm works, because I might just slip out the back.”  

“Come on, none of the alarms work.  If there’s a fire, we’re all screwed.”  

“Well, Eret is a bona fide fireman, isn’t he?”  She fixes his hair, efficiently, sweetly, and it feels more solid than anything that just happened.  More solid than anything Eret is, anything he had with him.  

“Can…can I call you tomorrow?”  He looks around, like the camera is suddenly going to be watching them, “the other morning we never really said anything and—”

“Of course,” she kisses his cheek, wiping the oil from her hand on the front of his loincloth.  It’s too sensitive and he shivers.  “Ok, I’m going to sneak out the back.”  

“I’ll, distract everyone in the front.”  

“Yeah,” she shakes her head, “you always do.”  

He’s still reeling when he makes his way back towards the locker rooms.  The crowd is daunting, every inch of his skin hyper-sensitive. He opens the locker room door and yawns, shuffling inside, forgetting to grimace at the way his feet stick to the floor. He’s going to be scrubbing his feet for an hour, it’s so worth it.  

He opens his eyes and blinks twice, and Drago Bludvist is sitting where his bag should be, its contents strewn haphazard around the floor.  

“Hiccup, I’ve noticed you’re good with snakes.  I have a job for you.”  


End file.
